When I originally brought up the demise of the Bombshell line, a few commenters from the Bitchery mentioned Luna might be circling the drain as well, while others rushed to reassure folks that the line was ok and continuing its marvy fantasy romance adventure tales.
But today, dl left the following comment:
According to Gail Dayton, Luna has cancelled publication of her 3rd Rose book. One wonders what other favorite authors have been cancelled. What are they thinking? Whatever it is, they can think it without my business.
Well, that sucks many, many butts. I’m a fan of the Rose trilogy and hope that Ms. Dayton can find a market for the third installment. But if they’re not publishing a conclusion to a trilogy, one I can only assume has already been contracted, that’s a bad, bad omen.
Any other news from Luna folks?
I loved “Poison Study.” So did my sister. I found it completely out of the norm in terms of the usual fantasy/romance formula, and it worked for me.
I read pretty much exclusively fantasy from eight until I was about 12, when it became fantasy and romance, and a few sci-fi (Star Wars novels [I was a nerd], and a couple Sarah Zettel, mostly). I’ve only recently started reading “normal” fiction, and I’m 21.
I can understand picking what you’re pretty sure’ll be good, because I can’t afford to spend too much, but am I the only one who reads the first chapter while in the bookstore and base my purchase off that and the back blurb?
Ha, whoops, managed to get a little HTML in that.
I’ve only read one Luna and it’s actually on my keeper shelf. I would have bought more but someone told me (or maybe I read it online) that they’re not guaranteed a HEA so I was wary and never bought another one. But if that’s not true then I would definitely buy it more often. I do love romantic historical fantasy and it’s frustrating having to read the back of the book to check for the HEA every time I try a new author.
Eek! HTML fix (I hope).
I like Poison Study very much. The romance was the weakest part of it, but the story overall was unusual and engaging.
Coming in late – and delurking. Although I have to declare a vested interest (I’m employed by Harlequin) I have NOTHING to do with Luna, so I have no gossip. However, I have just read Magic Study and it rocks. I think the world-building’s a lot clearer and more focussed in it, and the romance is secondary to the heroine’s voyage of self-discovery.
Marie B—
I come from the SF/F community, and I am in 100% agreement with you and Jane as to what “urban fantasy” means to readers of fantasy. To us, Neil Gaiman and Laurell Hamilton and Jim Butcher and even Gabriel Garcia Marquez qualify as “urban fantasy.” This is because we are an inclusive community.
But the marketing folks at most publishers don’t know from SF/F. Most SF/F lines don’t have a dedicated sales force—they are just another page in the giant catalogue that the sales people are flipping through.
The sales guys don’t have time to read every book put out by a publishing house, so target-audience-shorthand is the name of the game.
“Urban fantasy” isn’t a term they use much, if at all. If you say “urban fantasy,” they will likely say, “You mean with vampires and stuff, right?” Their primary experience with fantasy is paranormal romance, because that is a big seller and so even if they don’t read it, it’s on their radar.
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I love (in the ironic sense) the misconceptions about who is reading what. “Epic fantasy is read by 13-year-old boys.” (Tell that to the fans of GRRM.) “Boys read SF and girls read fantasy.” “Boys read adventure and girls want love stories.” “Girls read books and boys don’t.” “Romance is only read by lonely, repressed housewives in the fly-over states.”
Oi.
Publishing is an industry that at least tries to be semi-scientific in its analysis of the market. Unfortunately, most of the folks collecting data and doing the analysis took Astronomy for Jocks as their science elective in college.
Thanks PC for giving us an update. I was holding my breath hoping I’d see something from you letting us know there were still more of your books to come!
I looked this up after reading this thread and put it on my Must Buy List for when I’m in the States next week. It looks awesome.
Jo…Cast in Courtlight by Michelle Sagara was published in August, haven’t heard anything on another installment.
Haven’t read Golden yet, been planning to based on so many good SB recomendations. Just started Magic Study last night.
—E…liked your comments on stereotyping readers. IMO you are correct about them being outdated, and probably inacurate. Seriously, hang out in bookstores and just watch who shops where, it can be surprising.
Lyra…you don’t have to like Poison Study just because some people loved it. There are major authors other readers adore, that I cannot stand and will not read. I tell my kids “If everyone in the world liked chocolate, there wouldn’t be enough for me!” Because seriously, I have met people who do not like chocolate.
Michelle K…your hubby reads fiction with you? I’m sooooo envious. How many others have hubbys who cross the stereotype boundaries and read fantasy and/or romance?
I don’t read by publisher, but find some have much better authors. Don’t know if it’s because they pay better, or they have better “scouts” (sports term there).
Rokk on, Jeri! Just throw a few extra “h”s in some nouns, and, bingo! You’re gholden!
I got “Lover Awakened†yesterday and finished it at 5:30 this morning. My husband referred to it as That Book, since it was basically the literary equivalent of crack and I, the sad, shivering crack whore slumped in the doorway, muttering about the long wait until “Lover Revealed.†Sad. That’s what I am.
But—
It’s been so long since I sucked down (eee…pun…weird sexual metaphor…or all of the above?) a book like I did with the BDB book series, that I’ll take the drug addiction to have my faith in why I read romance restored.
One teeny, tiny leeetle question, though: can Zsadist’s name be Zsadist if the term “sadism†wasn’t really invented until after the Marquis de Sade, who died in 1814? I know, I know, I’m straying into fangirl territory here, but you can take the textual scholar out of grad school, yadda yadda.
One teeny, tiny leeetle question, though: can Zsadist’s name be Zsadist if the term “sadism†wasn’t really invented until after the Marquis de Sade, who died in 1814?
Dunno, Zoe, but good question. Maybe the Marquis de Zsade was actually a vampire who was around since before the Bruthahood.
You should go ask about it on JRW’s board. I’m sure the RFG’s will be happy to address your question in a forthright manner.
“you don’t have to like Poison Study just because some people loved it.”
I know, but when I’ve read NOTHING but glowing reviews for a book, and then when I finish it I feel the urge to throw it out the window, I can’t help questioning my sanity. The thing is I haven’t found ANYBODY who has read it who disliked it (besides me), which is strange. Usually I can find at least one “professional” reviewer out of the hundreds out there whose opinion deviates from the norm, but this time I’ve found none. Just weirds me out a little
dl,
My husband also likes to read (although not quite as much as me) and read fantasy long before we met. He’s pretty much read most of my fantasy and liked it. In fact he really liked the “Cushiel” books (I couldn’t get past the first book), and Kim Harrison’s witch books, which I found… okay.
In fact the only thing I have to twist his arm to read are mysteries, which he swears he doesn’t like, except for Robert Parker. And JA Jance. And…
Where as he doesn’t even bother to try to get me to read science fiction, because I don’t like it. Except for Orson Scott Card. And Spider Robinson. And… (grin)
Michelle K…congrats, sounds like he’s a keeper. Mine reads non-fiction almost exclusively, but I’m working on the kids! Have either of you read Rob Thurman?
Lyra…reading preferences are a very personal thing. Don’t worry about what you don’t like…just go find something else. (it’s a secret so don’t tell anyone, but I read one PC Cast book. She’s a very good author and it was OK, but I probably won’t read another. But everyone here loves her stuff…go figure) SB is a great place to browse for new reading material, I have discovered some of my new favorite authors here!
Nope, it’s not just rumor. I got my information about Zettel, Golden, and Brennan from the Luna boards and Zettel’s newsgroup. Brennan said recently on the Luna boards that she is writing book one of the White Magic sequel trilogy on spec for another publisher. And Zettel’s final Camelot book is still coming out in the UK, so at least it is available somewhere.
An online friend of mine talked to Sagara at the bookstore where she works and not only is her third book coming out, but Luna might want more from her.
I believe Zettel, Brennan, and Dayton are the only Luna authors with cancelled series. When I first posted about this, there wasn’t all that much info, but I never said that Luna was in danger of being closed down, just that certain series were having trouble.
I heard about Luna wanting to focus on urban fantasy from a few Luna authors, but most of their traditional fantasy series still seem to be in the pipeline.
And a word of warning on Brennan’s series, I think it was supposed to end in an HEA, but it wasn’t satisfying to me.
DANG IT! I just picked up Caitlin Brennan’s first in that White Mountain trilogy. I’m gonna be ticked if the third one doesn’t get published. I’m already hooked on it. I really love the Luna line and love my fantasies to be FANTASY. Urban is fine but could we please still have some pure fantasy like Gail Dayton, Christie Golden, etc? sigh. whine whine whine
Stephanie, the third White Mountain book, Shattered Dance, comes out Oct 1. The second one, Song of Unmaking, came out last year. I don’t know when and if the 2nd and 3rd ones will come out in mass market size, though.
Yeah, the Luna books as they’ve been so far really seemed to fill a niche that other pubs weren’t, i.e., female-focused traditional fantasy. I think the Powers That Be weren’t prepared for how “niche-y” that niche was, relative to the hordes of paranormal romance/urban fantasy readers.
(I mean “hordes” in the nicest way, of course. I’m one of those hordes. Or hhordes, if it’s a BDB book.)
There’s other “female-focused traditional fantasy” out there (I know my own first novel was marketed as a part of a cluster of such books), but it’s certainly true that it helps to have it gathered under an imprint, where it’s easier to find.
My mistake, Marie—I thought that group of Warner books (you and Carrie Vaughn and Lilith Saintcrow) were considered urban fantasy.
And speaking of Lilith’s books, my confirmation word is “hell57”! Is that like the world’s worst ketchup?
They are, but I’m not; the guiding principle was more “girls kicking ass” than anything setting-based. And I want to say there was one other in the group that wasn’t urban, but now I’m forgetting. I thought there were four of us, though.
I’ve been reading the Luna books since the inception of the imprint. While most of the books I’ve picked up have been hits with both myself and my husband [yes, he reads fantasy and a romantic subplot doesn’t put him off if it is a well-written story], the misses really missed. I would love for them to release more of the books as mass market PB’s so I can try out new authors without feeling such a pinch in the pocketbook. I loved that PC’s Divine by Mistake was released in mass market pb for that reason.
It’s a shame that some really good series’ are getting cut. Hopefully they’ll find homes elsewhere.
Hi, all. Yeah, it’s taken me a while to get over here—not so much that licking one’s wounds takes time 😛 but figuring out what to do next does. I have the agent looking for other places to send the 3rd book. Harlequin/Luna did offer to hang onto the book and maybe bring it out as an e-book and foreign edition in 2008, but I sure would like to see it in paper somewhere in the US. So we’re looking around.
The Bombshell person’s experience is the same as mine. They paid the contract, and will either let me have the rights back or see about maybe sometime bringing it out maybe…
Someone else mentioned how unlikely it would be that a new publisher would be interested in the last book of a series when the 1st two books were owned by somebody else—and that may be a problem—but I do have ideas for More stories in that universe, so…
I do appreciate all the compliments and promise that I’ll do my best to live up to them with future books. And get Jeri’s book! And PC’s (Just finished Divine by Mistake, and it Rocks! Go PC!! – and you really do NOT know what those folks in the panhandle will do—either panhandle…)
Oh, I did hear that the books that transferred from Luna to Mira did so because Mira has the budget to promote the books that Luna doesn’t have. So maybe these fantasies will get the push they deserve.
I have Poison Study somewhere in my stack across the room…I’ll have to dig it out and take it with me when I head to the mountains next week…
All y’all totally rock!
dl,
Not only does my husband love to read, but he also does plumbing and wiring and general around-the-house maintance. I sometimes fear to let him out of my sight!
And Rob Thurman as in the author of “Nightlife”? We both *really* liked that book, and I am hoping for more by her. (At least I’m assuming her, since the copyright said Robin)
Regarding female focused traditional fantasy—there’s tons of it out there: Jennifer Roberson, Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Patricia Briggs, Elizabeth Haydon, Jo Walton, Juliet McKenna, Holly Lisle, the aforementioned Sarah Zettel, Sara Douglas… even Peter S Beagle (the “Inkeeper’s Song” in particular). And Charles de Lint and Steven Brust have written some of my all time favorite female characters.
The fact that there are new lines putting out totally kick-ass female urban fantasy is just a bonus. (Which I completely appreciate by the way, since for a couple of years there it seemed like the only books I was interested in reading was older stuff I could find used.)
And Gail Dayton—I really hope that you find someone to publish the rest of the “Rose” series. My husband just finished the second and really liked it. (I’ve been on a mystery kick, so it’s still on my TBR list.)
And Marie Brennan as in “Doppelganger”? My husband and I both really enjoyed your book. Although my husband insists that he prdecited the ending, I think he exaggerates.
Sorry to go on so, but I love fantasy with strong female characters, and can go on about it for hours and hours. (grin)
Ok, I am way late in coming in on this, and most things have been said.
To update you on my series, Protector of the Faith will be out in February 2007.
When I turn in the proposal for the last 3 of the series We Shall See. I think it will be interesting to say the least after what all has gone on before.
On another note, I had a different editor than anyone else at Luna and she is now gone…
Robin
Doppelganger is indeed my firstborn. (And the sequel’s hitting shelves now, plug plug.)
Amen to your list of good female-centered fantasy, and were it not two a.m., I’d probably try to rustle up some additions to it.
Oh geez Marie, did you have to mention it’s coming out? Now I have to spend today looking for it. I loved Doppelganger.
^_^
It may or may not be out yet where you are—technically the street date isn’t until October—but I’ve been getting a lot of reports of it showing up early in various places.
Michelle k…Rob Thurman, has a sequil out about March. Has a website she keeps current. Nightlife is one of the very few books I have requested all my kids read, otherwise I leave them to their own choices.
Marie…your sequil out, the local BN is not careful about lay-down dates. If I’m looking for early new releases, I check them first. Will probably sneak its way into my TBR pile shortly.
The third White Magic book, Shattered Dance, is already out and I read it, hence the warning about the in my opinion, not so happily-ever-after ending. There was supposed to be a second trilogy but Luna cancelled it. Brennan is writing it anyway on spec for another publisher though.
Well, I giess ABE will be getting quite abit more business from me, if certain books are released overseas and not here.}:(
VERY disappointed with Harlequin.